The Monopolists: Obsession, Fury, and the Scandal Behind the World’s Favorite Board Game by Mary Pilon

The Monopolists explores the fascinating and little-known origins of the board game Monopoly. Though long marketed as the brainchild of an unemployed father during the Great Depression, Monopoly was in fact lifted almost entirely from a game that was invented thirty years earlier by a progressive feminist. Lizzie Magie created The Landlord’s Game to demonstrate how landowners were unjustly enriching themselves at the expense of renters. Pilon explains how Magie’s game evolved into Monopoly, and how this history was rediscovered in the 1970s by a man who was being sued by Monopoly’s manufacturers for producing a game called Anti-Monopoly.

This book, full of drama, intrigue and colorful characters, is great for board game fans as well as anyone who enjoys a good David-vs.-Goliath story of ordinary citizens waging legal battles against huge corporations.